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(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) Roy Moore waits to speak at a news conference on November 16, 2017, in Birmingham, Alabama. T here’s an alleged ass-grabber in the Senate and a self-described pussy-grabber in the White House. In Alabama, an alleged ephebophile who stands accused of assaulting young women —including one as young as 14—is running for a seat in the Senate. He enjoys support of the pussy-grabber in the Oval Office. The “dean of the House” paid $27,000 in taxpayer dollars to a woman who accused him of sexually harassing her; he stands accused of harassing other staffers, as well. The congressional Office of Compliance has paid some $17 million in public funds since 1997 to settle workplace disputes , according to Politico ’s Elana Schor; unknown are the number of those that involve allegations of sexual harassment. And this is just a snapshot of our current moment of reckoning in politics. Add in the allegations, admissions, and apologies from the worlds of entertainment and...

(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) Roy Moore speaks at a revival on November 14, 2017, in Jackson, Alabama. H e is a judge who was suspended from his position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for failing to uphold the Constitution of the United States. But that wasn’t enough to keep Roy Moore from winning the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. If anything, it was Moore’s defiance in the face of a federal court decision mandating that government officials issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples that won him the love of the Alabamians who turned out to vote for him. Or maybe it was that time in 2003 when Moore lost his seat on the court for refusing to remove a 2.6-ton monument of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse—a monument whose placement Moore had overseen. Take that, First Amendment! It’s been these kind of antics that have won Moore the admiration of self-described Christians on the right side of the political...

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, joined by Senators Mike Lee, Orring Hatch, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and John Cornyn, on Capitol Hill on October 30, 2017. “ The Republicans are like church mice,” Breitbart News honcho Stephen K. Bannon told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “No support of the president. Totally gutless. The Hill needs to step up.” Two months ago, talk like that from Bannon might have been written off by congressional Republicans as standard-issue bloviation from the former White House strategist and Trump campaign CEO. But since Bannon got into the Senate campaign game, two U.S. senators from the president’s own party have already decided not to run for re-election after Bannon threatened to back challengers in their respective GOP primary contests. Having already helped defeat the incumbent senator in the Alabama primary, Bannon’s fightin’ words carry a bit more weight than they might have before a theocratic,...

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Senator Jeff Flake, accompanied by his wife, Cheryl, leaves the Capitol on October 24 after announcing he won't seek re-election. F or progressives and liberals, it is tempting to eye the current discord and disarray in the Republican Party with a sense of amusement, if not outright glee. But the current trend of divisive loyalty tests for national political candidates poses a grave danger to the nation, especially when imposed by an ally of an authoritarian administration that regularly demonstrates contempt for the institutions and norms of representative democracy. Senator Jeff Flake was never much for Donald Trump. Flake, a libertarian, didn’t support Trump’s presidential bid, and has been a constant critic of the president since from the administration’s outset, even writing a book about how Trump is destroying conservatism (a phenomenon we noted during the primary campaign). Steve Bannon, the propagandist and former White House strategist turned...

(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) Steve Bannon speaks at a campaign rally on October 17, 2017, for Arizona Senate candidate Kelli Ward, who is running against incumbent Republican Senator Jeff Flake in the 2018 primary. I t is always tempting to dismiss the importance of America’s far right to the nation’s political trajectory, given the torrent of absurd and frankly false claims of its proponents, whether regarding the birth certificate of a president or the meaning of the Constitution. But around the world, the far right is on the rise, infecting nearly every Western democracy, and ours is hardly immune. Witness the election of Donald J. Trump, which most progressives and liberals had deemed impossible. After spending a weekend at the Values Voter Summit, an annual conference hosted by the political arm of the Family Research Council, I fear that same denial remains strong, even in the Age of Trump. Were there ever a doubt that the Christian right, as represented by the Family Research...